


The Pale Prince of A Palace Cracked

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Established Relationship, Futurefic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-23
Updated: 2003-11-23
Packaged: 2017-11-01 09:52:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/355232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is it bright where you are?  [Warning! Character death and extremely dark tones!]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pale Prince of A Palace Cracked

## The Pale Prince of A Palace Cracked

by Lexalot

<http://www.livejournal.com/users/lexalot>

* * *

The Pale Prince of A Palace Cracked  
By: Lexalot 

Summary: Is it bright where you are? 

Rating: R 

Disclaimer: If I were even remotely affiliated with the people who own them, I'd never be able to get away with this :) 

Pairing: Clark/Lex 

Spoilers: Jitters, Suspect (vague), Duplicity 

Inspiration and Reference: Music - "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning" by Smashing Pumpkins which contains the line that makes up the title, their song "Blank Page", "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" by Coldplay, and "Calling All Angels" and "It Can't Rain All The Time" by Jane Siberry; Movies - "Julian Po"; Books - Quotes; T.S. Elliot's "The Hollow Men", and Dr. Johnson in Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas." 

Warning: Major character death! 

* * *

It's a story you probably won't want to hear. However, I believe I have a right to explain my side of things. 

Most people will tell you this isn't how it goes. That's because most people like a happy ending. 

By the end of this story, I'll be dead... 

* * *

"Get out!" 

No, I didn't skip anything. That's how the story starts. This is exactly how it began. We hadn't been arguing. We weren't even in the same room until I had burst into the penthouse bedroom and shouted those words at him. He had been watching television peacefully, and we had not even seen each other since that morning, but I came in full of wrath, and aimed it squarely at him. 

He was confused to say the least. "Whoa, Lex! What happened?" Clark was genuinely concerned. We had been lovers for five years, through my father's death, through his father's heart attack, and the discovery of his true heritage. We had been closer than I imagined any two people could ever be, and suddenly, I was a million miles away, and he knew it. "What's going on?" 

"You're leaving! That is what's going on, Clark! You're getting your things and moving out of the penthouse!" 

"What?" His expression skewered me, but I gave him a stone-faced scowl as my heart ripped open, and his questioning continued. "Why? What did I do? Lex, you're really scaring me here!" 

I knew I was scaring him. But I also knew something he didn't, which was that I couldn't afford to care that his feelings were hurt. This was for the better, for his own good, even if he didn't realize it. I couldn't cave under the pressure like I had a hundred other times I had wanted to finally end it. Those attempts had been stillborn, the courage to do it dissipating before I could try to put the plan into action. This time I had resolved that I would follow through, no matter how much I did not like it. I had to break it off with him. I had no choice, because time was running short, and my sanity was wearing thin. 

"I don't want you here. I don't want to be together anymore. I've wanted you gone for a long time, and I can't take another day. I'm sorry, Clark, but it's over!" I had to hand it to myself. I put on one hell of an act. Clark looked like I felt. Still, I didn't let my mask slip. None of my pain showed. Otherwise, he wouldn't have taken me seriously. Since I didn't believe my own words, I had to make every effort to be convincing. 

"What do you mean... it's over?" It took him the extra strength to get out that last part. His wound was gaping in this statement, in his eyes. His emotional agony mocked me. My own emotional turmoil mocked me at the same time. 

"It's over means it's over, Clark! Ended! Finished! It means farewell, have a nice life, and try not to let the door hit you on the way out!" Christ, I was cold. In that moment, I even felt cold, freezing, so distant from the warmth of my love. But it was a necessary evil. So, though I was dying inside, I remained composed and callous on the outside. I glared at him with ice in my eyes. "Are you still here?" 

"Lex..." His tone was pleading, begging me not to do this, asking why I was doing this and where it had come from all of a sudden. "What did I do that was so wrong?" His voice was raspy, choked and strained by sobs, and as he stood there crying, all I could do was fold my arms and steel myself to it. Internally though, I was a miserable wreck. It didn't help my mental state any when he said, "Tell me what this is all about, please!" 

My courage faltered, and I had to say what came next. I didn't want to, but I knew that if he heard the words, it would crush his spirit and faith enough that he would run from me and I would be free to hate myself in private for it. "I don't love you, Clark." 

When he winced, I immediately regretted going so far, but to my dismay, rather than flee, he stayed right where he was. He wanted to understand, and I pitied him that he never could. "You've fallen out of love with me?" 

There's the old saying about drastic times calling for drastic measures, and I drew on that, because I knew I would not be able to maintain my heartless veneer much longer. I was at my most cruel when I stared right into his eyes and told the worst, most atrocious and despicable lie to ever come from my mouth. "I was never in love with you to begin with, Clark." 

Rivers spilled down his cheeks, and his grimace twisted a dagger in my heart, identical to the one I had plunged into his. Never had I seen the pang of betrayal taint his lovely features and soak them in sadness. My soul reflected his sorrow, but none of it shone on the surface. My exterior was too dark, revealing not a glimmer of light, not an ounce of hope, not a spark of sympathy. It was all a show for his own benefit. This would be easier that way. It would be easier if he left hating me. He could hate me for the suffering I had caused him with all the awful things I had said. It didn't matter whether or not I could live with that, because it would certainly be easier for him to live with it this way. 

He was still staring at me, eyes glazed and wet. I was surprised, because I had never seen him cry before, not even in the worst of times or situations. Until then, I had come to wonder if he was capable of shedding tears. Now that I knew, I wished to God that I had never found out. It only served to further illustrate how badly I had hurt him. It just proved that I had done more damage than anything else had ever inflicted upon him, and what made it worse was knowing that I had done the harm intentionally. This trauma was too much for him. Despite the fact that I was causing the both of us this grief, it was incredibly hard on me as well. It was that much harder having to keep my true feelings hidden at all costs. 

"Lex..." A futile appeal to me for a better explanation, for comfort, for me to save him as he had always saved me. His voice had been so raw with pain. He had nearly choked on my name, and I, on my pride. 

The best mercy I could do was to push him out of the path of this runaway train. My eyes met his, and in the tension of the moment, I gave him a stern look and spoke in a commanding tone. "Goodbye, Clark." It was eerily reminiscent of a day when our friendship had almost ended back when he was in high school, but this time I knew there would be no reconciliation soon to come for this was not a temporary problem. 

I was worried Clark would continue to fight for us... God, I had loved him for that, for how brave he had always been when it came to overcoming our differences, and for how he always fought for our relationship... But as I asserted myself clearly, his denial and resistance broke under the tremendous weight of his heartache. His eyes darted around the room, down to the floor, then back to me again. Abruptly, he turned and hurried out the door without lingering a single second to claim any of his belongings. I assume because the one thing that mattered here that was truly his had just rejected him. 

He didn't even slam the door. I might have felt better if he had, but instead he left it wide open, rushing into the elevator and away from me. Some small and mean part of me felt vindicated, victorious even. But it was the morbid part of me that ran to the balcony and peered down at the street below, waiting to make sure that he exited the building. As soon as I saw a little figure dash out onto the sidewalk and run down the street, relief flooded me as much as guilt. 

Clark raced away as fast as he could go without raising suspicion, going up the block and then disappearing around the corner. I guessed that he did not know where he was going. Oddly enough, neither did I. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was heading someplace lonely, somewhere black and frozen, someplace without my savior where it was cold and yet it still seemed like hell. 

This was the beginning of the end for me... 

One week passed. 

My grief had raked my soul raw and stripped me of any fighting spirit that remained inside. 

The first seven days without Clark had been the worst. My responsibility for what happened haunted me. The part I had played as catalyst to my own heartbreak was emotionally devastating, the damage irreparable. I had fled to my office at LexCorp that night, and I locked myself in my office. I hadn't left since. My nights were spent on the sofa there, because I couldn't bear to return to an empty home and an empty bed. The vacuum of my suddenly hollow life was too much for the shell of my former self to withstand. The thin layer that protected me was beginning to crack. 

Finally, on the seventh day, my mind went numb from the pain. Clark seemed like just another spoke in the tragic cycle of my romantic relations, but I was forcing myself to accept the delusion that he was no different from any other that had preceded him. It was a lie, but the lie set me free more than the truth ever would. I preferred to be liberated by deceit if the only alternative was to become a prisoner of reality. 

In my hand, I held a glass of bourbon. It was probably about seven o'clock in the morning, but I hadn't slept in a few days, so time seemed to lack consequence. My head hurt and my eyes were transfixed by an indistinct spot on the floor. By that point, I was practically dead already, eviscerated of my humanity, existing without purpose or passion. 

A repetitive clink distracted me from my internal oblivion. I looked up to discover that I was causing the disturbance. My hand was shaking involuntarily, and the bottom of the glass was rattling against the surface of my desk. I couldn't control the violent tremors that racked the liquid, causing it to splash around wildly. Witnessing this, devoid of any power to stop it, frightened me. 

A thought touched down in my brain like lightning. I was immediately grateful that Clark was not around to see this. While it occurred to me that I had sent Clark away at just the right time, the fates that weave cosmic jokes spun an irony just for me. 

A buzz came over the intercom from my secretary. "Clark Kent is here, Mr. Luthor." 

Before I even noticed that my fist had tightened around the it, the glass shattered. The amber liquor spilled all over the floor and the desk. The broken shards laid in a scattered heap of jagged debris amongst the shallow pools of bourbon. A sting was born to my perception. Skewered by razor edges and burned by the alcohol soaking into the wound, the pain barely registered in my dulled senses. I opened my hand to examine the cuts, and watched blood well in the gashes while tiny streams of red dammed in my palm. 

Abruptly, the doors to my office burst open and Clark marched in like he had every right to do so. I watched him walk in and close the doors behind him, locking it. I don't know if his intention was to keep others out or to keep me in, but I would not be kept. I had already endured the worst of this loss, and mourned it. If he was hoping to trap me in my own sympathies, he had come in vain. 

I barely moved, except to close my bleeding hand and recline in my chair. He met my veneer with incredulity. I suspected he might attempt to confront me, so I was prepared, but the pang in my chest was unavoidable, regardless of how ready I had been to write this in stone. I was determined to totally decimate any surviving shred of hope left in this boy that the I would recant our dissolution. 

"Is there something I can do for you, Kent?" I was snide and bitter, as much as if years of repressed hatred had passed in the space of the past week. 

His brow furrowed at how formally and spitefully I addressed him. "Lex, we need to talk." He probably tried to sound resolute, but he only succeeded at seeming angry, and frustrated with my callous treatment of him. 

"No, we don't." I was assertive, borderline vicious. "I've said all I had to say, and that's the end of the matter." 

"And I suppose I don't have a right to say..." 

"You suppose correctly! What I said makes anything you could say irrelevant." I would have loved to have let him speak, to goad him into winning me back, to hear every affectionate word he had to offer me in consolation... It's a mortal sin to lie to an angel. A grievous, mortal sin. 

"Lex, please, will you tell me what the hell is going on?" His expression begged an answer of me, and inside I blanched. 

Nothing was worth this amount of sorrow. Nothing was worth causing him to suffer like this. But mercy isn't always merciful. This was a time when the lesser evil was, in fact, the greater good. My silence remained unbroken. 

"There has to be something you're not telling me." I faltered internally. He was treading dangerous ground, and before anxiety could set in about where he was going with this, he continued. As if he hazarded a guess, "Are you ill or something?" 

I wanted to burst out laughing in that moment. If only it had been that simple! I wished it were cancer. I wished I had the jitters. I wished I were dying of radiation poisoning from years of exposure to the damned meteor rocks! If it had been anything like that, I might have died in peace and spent my last years with Clark faithfully by my side. But no. This was far more sinister, far more treacherous... and tragically, far more complicated. 

"You tell me. You're the one with x-ray vision." My tone was caustic, as I used words as weapons to scald him like acid. "See for yourself." 

As I stood, I came around to the side of my desk and held my hands out, waiting for his visual examination. I had to allow this. I had something to prove. His pupils dilated and his eyes traveled down my body from head to toe. He blinked out of x-ray, and his features fell sullen. I imagine he was rather frustrated that his scan turned up nothing, because that would have explained my bizarre behavior. I was quite satisfied, however. There was no physical evidence for him to find, and it only made my case stronger that his search yielded nothing. There were some things that were just beyond his sight. 

Just as I believed I was in the clear, a single drop of blood betrayed me. He was glancing down with a crestfallen air about him, when his superhearing and heightened visual acuity picked up a speck of crimson as it dripped from my hand to hit the floor. 

"Oh my God..." He gaped at it, and then at me, as if his concern had been proven so righteous after all. "Lex, you're bleeding!" 

"I'm well aware of that." As cruel as I wanted to be, my defenses were lowering in light of his obvious alarm. I had to get him out of my life, but I did not want him to worry about me. "It's superficial, Clark. I broke a cheap glass from my bar. That's all." I was becoming increasingly sympathetic. I chastised myself for letting the wall crack in that moment, and I instantly sought to rectify that mistake. "Now, leave! I don't need you! I certainly don't need you for this..." 

As I spoke, I lifted my hand to make a quick gesture to the wound. As I showed it to him, my eye caught the corner of my palm, and I trailed off, forgetting anything I meant to say in addition to what I already had. My heart seemed to stop and my breath caught as my entire body went cold with an eerie chill. I stared in shock at my hand, turning it towards me so I could look at it more carefully. I looked at Clark, and he must have seen the panic in my eyes, because he seemed so confused. It was then that I realized that he didn't see it. 

My hand was stained with green, glowing green. And it bled out from the deep scratches on the inside of my palm and fingers. As if it were in my veins. Like blood. I was truly terrified in that moment, unable to escape what was obviously a delusion. It was starting to get worse... I had prayed for my sanity to be spared just a little longer, but I had already evaded the pitfalls of my deteriorating condition for far too long. I shook my head, closed my eyes, and opened them again. Dark red there this time, and though that was a little encouraging, I was still shaken from my core foundation. 

"Lex, what it is?" It was plain that something was horribly wrong. "Don't tell me you're fine, because I can see that you're not!" 

My mental stability was waning, and Clark couldn't be here for this. It wasn't safe anymore. 

In a rash act of desperation, I stormed back to my desk and opened the top drawer. "You're right. I'm not fine. Once you're out of here though, I'll be much better." Truth told in a riddle is still truth. I was still reeling from the attack on my mind, but what pained me the most was his presence. My engrossing madness led me to take drastic measure. "But you don't want to listen to reason, so you leave me no alternative." My voice was steady. A bit crazed perhaps, but determined. I produced a small lead box from inside my drawer, and I quickly approached him. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, and then I saw fear creep into that sure exterior. He began to step back away from me, but it was too late. I backed him up against the bookshelves and opened the box. The glow reflected a sickly green on his skin and the Kryptonite crippled him as he shrunk in my shadow. He slumped down onto the floor, and I followed him to it, all the while keeping the box under his face at a fair distance. I thought if he knew that I would resort to such means, he would know I was serious. "I never want to see you again, or I swear that I will kill you." 

My love was a castle. I bought it and burned it down. 

Everything ends badly, or it wouldn't end. My internal organs felt like they had liquefied. Melted in the heat of ambiguous anger, false hatred, and self-destruction. The person I had become in that moment exorcized me of my soul, and I wept inside at the loss. Clark was my last vestige of innocence and I had cast him into the fire. The image of him weakened and choking on breath he didn't have to cry seared into my brain. I left him there like that. I closed the box and took it with me on my way out. 

It was the last time I saw him before the end... 

A year passed. 

My soul was already little more than a shadow, the light well behind me, as the darkness prevailed. The gloom tainted my present and colored my future black, and I had grown so accustomed to it that my spirit was as pale as my skin. My contentment was a transparent ghost of its former self, having passed away like a golden age that is too soon forgotten. My descent got steeper by the day, gaining momentum as I barreled down the road to hell. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but mine was paved in the bad. Blood was my price, wealth my game, and sex my recreation. To me, my life was practically unrecognizable as my own, yet to the public, appearances were little different than they were when I lived in Smallville. There was scandal and talk and speculation, but I waded through those muddy mires to come out immaculately clean on the other side. Only I knew what had changed, what I had given up, lost... The most disturbing part was that I had ceased to care about the past and everything in it. 

I was on the phone in my office when the doors burst open. A scene which was eerily familiar, but a different offender stormed in this time. 

He was as angry as I'd ever seen him, and I had only ever seen him so brimming with anger when working the streets of Gotham under cover of night donning a hi-tech world of gadgets and armor that I had helped him design. "I'm terminating our partnership! Wayne Enterprises is not going to be doing any more business with LexCorp!" He was shouting, infuriated, his eyes alive with blue flame and his sharp features contorted with authoritative scorn. 

Observing him with a warped spark lit in my libido, I thought how boarding school was the last time I had wanted to fuck him so badly. 

My attention transferred back to the phone against my ear. "Sorry, Talia, I'm going to have to call you back." If Bruce heard her name, he knew I had been talking to his former lover, but either way, he didn't react. He glared at me, and stared right back, unimpressed with his tempestuous entrance and petulant proclamation. "What seems to be the problem, Bruce?" 

"Fuck you, Lex! You are my problem!" His voice resonant, his temper idling just below rage to bake him with a heated energy... Anger suited Bruce. "Any deals we had are null and void!" 

He amused me with this little outburst, especially because he wasn't known for them... but I suspected that this was personal. "On what grounds?" 

"How about breech of contract?" His timbre flattened, dipping several octaves to sound deep and intimidating. Those tactics may have been useful to him with criminals as Batman, but I was immune to his behavioral ploys. I had been there to see him hone them. "I had to read in The Daily Planet that LexCorp was awarded the new military weapons contract. I won't approve anything to be manufactured for the purposes of warfare. You know where I stand on such issues, so it shouldn't surprise you that I'll have nothing to do with this. Count Wayne Enterprises out on this one, as well as any future endeavors, for that matter!" 

"That's it? You're rescinding our agreement over this?" I narrowed my eyes at him. "You want out, Bruce?" I knew better than to make veiled threats to Bruce. Didn't stop me from doing it, though. With a calculating and complacent smirk... My arrogance had long ago seen my withering humility crumble. 

"I am out, Lex, and it's not as if I need more reason to leave, but I can name you plenty. Your extracurricular business activities, for instance." Now it was he who narrowed his eyes at me, scowling mercilessly, passing judgment like some self-righteous martyr. Bruce was the dashboard patron saint of ethics. That was definitely a conflict of interests considering the new turn my interests had taken to the city's underground crime syndicate. 

"And precisely what 'extracurricular business activities' would you be referring to?" Always a three-dimensional chess game with Bruce, even before I took permanent leave of my senses, but back then the shuffling of pawns and knights had been much more pleasant. Now, play had became savage like a death sport, yet it remained sophisticated like the veneer of the civilized... It was his move. 

"You know damn well what I'm talking about. Since when have you aspired to follow your father's footsteps so closely?" 

Check. I was impressed. Cornered, but not beaten. "How long have you been spying on my private affairs? You know, Bruce, I didn't help you get where you are so you could turn your investigative detecting on me." 

"No, you didn't. You helped me because we were friends, but clearly that's not the case anymore." A hint of remorse underlying that hostility. 

"Evidently not." Nothing stirred in me. My facade iced over in the brief seconds of silence. 

"And what about Clark? Are things so different, have you changed so much that you're making attempts on his life now?" 

He was dangerously close to checkmate, and he knew it. "I assume you're referring to the recent accident at the plant?" 

"Accident? No, Lex. There was Kryptonite all over the place and he said you had the building lined with lead!" 'He said'... So Bruce had spoken to Clark. Which explained his impromptu visit and uninvited accusations. "That would make it so he couldn't see inside and he'd be walking into a death trap. That doesn't sound very accidental. Quite the contrary, it sounds conspicuously deliberate!" 

I started to make a dismissive gesture with my hand, but a familiar green glow caught my eye. I immediately became distracted when I saw that my palm was bleeding liquid Kryptonite again. It trickled out as the old wound slowly reopened. I gaped rather obviously at the inside of my hand, failing to hide my shock. In Clark's absence, my guard was down this time, and for a minute, I forgot Bruce's lingering presence. I was aghast, my pain and madness rushing in like the tide to drag me under the threshold of reason. 

All of a sudden, I started talking to myself out loud, like the words automatically spilled from inside my head out my mouth, as if I were alone... In a way, I was. "It's never going to stop, is it? It'll only get worse." For that one instant, I was the man I had been over a year ago. Compassionate, more human, and watching myself fade. 

"Lex?" A worried and hushed voice. 

When I glanced up, the trance broken, Bruce was staring at me. His eyes were riddled with puzzlement, and his expression bore a sudden sympathy I couldn't stand to receive. Then, I quickly returned to my callous guise, and let the emptiness reclaim me. I recovered my mask, but it was too late. Bruce has already seen beneath it. "Get out of here! Take all your investments in LexCorp with you. I couldn't care less." How terribly I meant that last sentence too. "And I don't want to see you or your alter ego skulking around my property. Tell your friend to keep his distance while you're at it." 

I turned partially away from him, massaging my temple with my one hand while trying to ignore the other, because it was still secreting green poison. 

Bruce didn't budge. Then suddenly, as though something had just hit him, he said, "Why would you do that? Why would you set up a trap and then want me to warn him...?" He knew it made no sense, and while he pieced the mystery together, I merely sat pinching the bridge of my nose, feeling extraordinarily dizzy. "You're not trying to kill him... You're pushing him away on purpose." That assessment wrenched me from my sickness. It was only half true, but this certainly resembled checkmate. "You're protecting him!" Yes, this was definitely checkmate. 

I couldn't wait for any more of his brilliant insight to come. "You're a smart man, Bruce. Always have been." I opened the top drawer of my desk, and reached inside. "Too smart." I pulled my gun out, ready to fire, but when I went to take aim, there was no one else there. Just me. Bruce was gone. His stealth was uncanny, but I supposed it had to be, given his line of work. 

Replacing the gun in the drawer, my temper began to cool. The dizziness was subsiding, but when I examined my hand, it had not stopped bleeding neon green. My impulses blazed. I had to fix this problem, because the mental repercussions were too crippling. I took one of my decorations down off the wall, a weapon of war, a heavy sword, the only one in the office that was not dull. Placing my hand flat on the desk, I held the razor sharp edge of the blade steady just above my wrist for good measure, and then drew the steel back. 

This was a defining moment, the shedding of my last vestige of sanity and conscience... All my faith and guilt lay in that bleeding hand. 

I brought the sword crashing down and chopped it clean off. 

Therein, I gave birth to my own ruin. 

Lex Luthor, as the world knows him, was born that day... 

Six and a half years passed. 

That was how long it took Clark to infiltrate my defenses and security to get to me, to finally see me one on one again. There was a lot of water under that decaying bridge by this time and much had occurred... but this story is about me and Clark, so I see no reason to rehash all that happened in between. It would only drudge up irrelevant and unflattering images of me that are best left obscured in the darkness that forged them. 

It was New Year's Eve. I had left a corporate party, indifferent to the celebration, happy to retire to my penthouse for the night. It was snowing and I spent the limo ride home watching the flakes melt on the window as the heat inside warmed them on the outside. The dark glass was all that separated the comfort from the cold, but it was enough to make the two seem like completely different worlds. 

I will never know how he did it, but when I strolled into my glorified bachelor pad, unlocking all the locks that were as they should have been and disabling my alarm system, which was fully enabled as it should have been, there he was. Clark had been sitting at the foot of the bed, but when he saw me walk into the bedroom, he rose to his feet. It astonished me to think how much planning and rationalizing must have gone into this little surprise. I didn't permit myself to feel anything, though I wanted to feel everything all at once. I did not move. I didn't even turn on the light. I just let the dim light from the overcast sky and electric city illuminate the room with their soft hazy glow. 

He was wearing a suit, and a cheap one at that. Proof that he never learned. There he was, my mortal enemy having broken into my house, and all I could think was that he had never taken any of my advice on his wardrobe so that he didn't look like a bargain basement reporter. My ideas that he wouldn't be taken seriously dressed in gray polyester were obviously overruled by his humble nature... but then, being humble was not a flaw I could say was mine. That was Clark's specialty. Particularly in those pathetic glasses.. Actually, the glasses were absurdly attractive on his face. It was the disguise I thought laughable. 

My sense of nostalgia threatened to stage a coup on my psyche. I was grounded in my loathing, but all else was unstable. This tranquil interlude was treading dangerous territory. I knew I was in trouble when I pocketed the Kryptonite ring instead of unleashing it upon him. I'd be lying if I said it was because I was impressed that he had gotten this far and lived, but that was what I told myself at the time. I deceived myself into fancying this part of the game despite it feeling oddly more like a time-out. 

"To what do I owe the honor of this visit?" Condescension. It was my first acceptable resort at establishing his meaninglessness and inferiority to me. 

Soft-spoken, almost tender... Too kind, all things considered... "Lex, we need..." 

"You're not welcome here." Interruption. The second step of the whole process to establish his insignificance. 

Clark had the worst, most insufferable habit of optimism. Which is to say nothing of his habitual beauty that was impossibly enchanting, no matter his wardrobe or general appearance. I had to contend with both in this situation, and regardless of the infectious sunshine that was Clark, I remained resolute. Stone-faced, one prosthetic hand complete with mobile fingers... A machine imitating life. And I don't know which I mean to describe more, the hand or me. 

"This has never been resolved, and I swear it's going to get resolved tonight!" He was adamant, authoritative even. His insistence amused me. "It's about time, don't you think?" 

"Time for what?" I was finished with strategies. My animosity ignited, and I spat it at him. 

"An explanation! This has gone on far too long, and it's only getting worse. I can't go on like this anymore." 

He was clinging to a dream, and as perfect as it would have been to latch onto it with him, it was no longer an option. If I let myself wade in that same reverie, I would sink. "If you came here in hopes of reconciling, you've wasted your time and energy." 

Each subsequent effort gathered more desperation on its way down the crestfallen trail. It seemed like he had come here to confront me without even knowing what he would say. Then, the logical thing for him was to be honest, pour his heart out to me to show me that it was still mine. "I've been racking my brain trying to figure out why you hate me so much that you'd want me in my grave instead of by your side!" 

"This isn't really about you, Clark." This was getting difficult. Extremely so. Enough to skewer my pretense of detachment. 

"You cannot tell me that the Lex I know isn't in there somewhere! He's still inside you, and I haven't given up on him!" 

God, I loved him for saying that! I loved him for believing in me the way I had always believed in him... but his beloved Lex didn't live here anymore. So much of my soul hadn't survived the emotional suffocation and what was left didn't amount to a whole person... As much as he believed in me, I didn't. "Then, you're a fool." 

Wordlessly, his hands loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. He opened the white cotton to reveal nothing but smooth skin underneath. I glanced at his golden chest, visibly stunned by the sight of his bare flesh. His heroic attire was blessedly absent from his wardrobe. He had not come as Superman. He had not come to win. Or even to argue. He looked me straight in the eye, and offered himself up for the taking, either of his life or his body. Something told me he was making the choice was mine. "Then, prove it." That was when I realized he was the one with something to prove. 

After spending what dragged like an eternity without having to face him, my immunity to his purity must have lost some of its resistance. Residual echoes of a love long exorcized reverberated in my soul. The pressure of being haunted by a memory of love cracked my hardened shell. What engulfed me, however, was not the feeling of love, but of being loved. 

Bathing in the light of another was almost as satisfying as having a light of my own... And there was no other who loved me like Clark. 

I slowly approached him as he presented himself to me so openly and unconditionally. That he loved me in such a way was a marvel. Unconditional love. The term was so infinite, so all encompassing, and yet I had it personified in the man before. The feeling that love inspired in me was the first thing to solidify in the fog of my senses to touch me. I placed my prosthetic hand, which was encased in a black leather glove, over his heart. The metal and material did not feel, yet I felt his heartbeat, as if some phantom limb was there to feel his heart race. Something dormant in me woke... some facsimile of love, like paraphrasing Shakespeare or misquoting a sonnet. The text was different, but the essence was the same. 

Clark had been right. I was in there somewhere. If only I had known where to look... because I didn't. 

I gazed up into his glassy eyes, and lifted the gloved hand to caress his cheek. I searched his face for revulsion, and as predicted, there was none. He did not hate me, and if he didn't by then, he never would. My desire welled, remembering vividly the depth and intensity sex had once held for us and I craved those things again. "Maybe we can just be ourselves tonight." 

A modest smile spread across his lips and he nodded slightly, seemingly temporarily content with the ambiguity of this nonspecific arrangement. His approval lent me the courage to kiss him. It was the sweetest nectar to someone who had been dining on ashes until this moment. The intoxicating taste of this reunion, the drink for my desert after the dry spell, the ice melting on the surface as it was warmed by passion from within... the persuasion that was Clark overwhelmed my conviction. I bid myself not to get entangled in sentimentality, so I divested my emotions and memories to strand myself in the physical. 

We made love right there on the bed, the exchange so heavenly, I don't know that it can be articulated. Our bodies merged like they had always been one. I was inside him, but it wasn't a matter of where I ended and he began. We were the same entity, split into two people, each incomplete without the other. There was no greater thrill or experience. This was tantamount to enjoying your whole life in the space of a single second. The pleasure we took in one another created a circuit of electricity that flowed through every touch and every kiss. I reveled in his affection, and he basked in the care of my attention. Quickened pulses and excited breaths. Tossing and rolling in knots of satin sheets. The agony and bliss of foreplay leading into the ache and joy of penetration building to the sheer euphoria of climax. It was so perfect that it exists now only as a tapestry of ethereal imagery and sensations that I keep vivid in my mind's eye. It was the last time I ever knew true happiness in life. 

Afterwards, I lay falling asleep with my lover in my arms, high on Clark's love in its purest form. One major concern crept up on me, however. I did not know what this meant for the future. I could not imagine where we were to go from there. We had wandered down a path that yielded no direction, and we would probably have to go back the way we came... if that were even possible. This complicated things... terribly. I had steered myself away from Clark, costing me everything I held most sacred in this world, specifically to avoid this collision. 

No one knew the breadth of the problem. No one could fathom its intricate torment. 

My mind was possessed of two wills. One sanctified my love for Clark and the life I had before I felt the other take over. The other... domineered insurmountable. It made me hunger for the destruction of all that was around me, but inside, I starved for release from this paradoxical psychosis. I raged against it and it barely seemed to register as a whimper... I couldn't stop myself from waxing philosophic... "This is the way the world ends." As it happened, by coincidence or fate, I was right... 

When I woke, the first hue of dawn was tinting the room with a murky blue light. I couldn't recall dreaming, but the moment I glanced over at Clark's silhouette carved out in black satin sheets, the nightmares came flooding into my brain. Flashes of blood, blades, green, and my otherworldly savior. Not a single image pleasant. Not even Clark. His angelic beauty turned demonic and ugly. His heart was filled with loathing, and that hate was reserved for me. I had suffered such visions for years, and in the most extreme periods of my dementia, I had sought to eradicate the illusory menace that haunted me, threatened me, despised me. That morning was different, however, because the enemy was slumbering peacefully in my bed. Vulnerable. Unsuspecting. I, next to him, with the means and desire to destroy him. 

The night before seemed like a fleeting fantasy, something so distorted that I believed our friendship and romance had been the delusion... even though it was the other way around... The greatest pitfall of hindsight is the creation of your own private hell, where you must watch yourself do something atrocious and despicable that you now know was a mistake, and you are forced to see it over and over and over again, repeating in your memory, tripping over the moment like a needle that falls victim to a scratch in a record. What I did next was that moment, the instant when I fell. 

Slipping out the bed, careful not to rouse my guest who felt as much my beloved as he did a stranger, I went straight to my armoire. I dug through the bottom drawer to find a large lead case. The latch opened and the lid lifted, a bright green glow radiated from inside. Gripping the object in the mechanical prosthetic I engineered myself to replace the hand I had cleaved off, I raised it to regard it with maniacal ambition drowning my conscience in a flood of madness. It was a dagger of skilled craftsmanship, custom-made to my specifications, the blade itself refined Kryptonite with terrifying curves and hooks and an expertly sharpened edge. The knife had been conceived with purpose, specifically to kill Clark, to eliminate Superman, to make them both suffer an excruciating death... one that mirrored my life, extracted some sort of toll for this agonizing existence. 

Though I was far from my senses, I did not necessarily want Clark dead, but by his course of standing in the way of my sadistic psychosis, Superman imposed enough of a threat that I would sacrifice Clark in order to purchase the freedom of my inner demons. My only hate sprung from my only love. 

Moving stealthily with the Kryptonite weapon in my grasp, I approached the bed. I rounded the side until I was standing in front of him. He was stretched out on his side across that half of the mattress, unaware, innocent, trusting... vile. My contempt for his light was born in the eclipse of my soul. Staring with ire and a hollow heart, I wanted nothing more than to murder him. My wrath mounted, swelling inside me like a blackhole, its vacuous lust too consuming to defy. 

Everything that had drawn me to him had grown so revolting. Any hope I had in me had been buried under the deluge of this psychological mutation, a unique brand of mutant insanity, bred by the meteor shower and every minute of exposure I unknowingly accumulated thereafter. Coupled with the trauma I had endured since that day, my mental health suffered doubly. My lifetime of scars, loss and cruelty and betrayal... all of that fed this monster born that day in Smallville. It had Kryptonite in its veins and it controlled me where it had once been the other way around, but it had pillaged and plundered until it reigned... until it rained blood. When I gazed at Clark comfortable in the safe haven of peaceful sleep, I tasted blood in my mind and it whet my thirst. 

This was what it waited for, what it yearned to do, and I was powerless to stop it. I hated myself for being so weak. I hated having to submit and accept that there was nothing I could do. I hated knowing I was hovering over my darling angel with a twisted grin on my face because I was finally ready and able to destroy him. I hated that in the moment I was crying violently inside yet this thing that ruled me with an iron fist remained untouched by emotion on the outside, bearing nothing but an evil glint in its eye and an expression of pure victory and malice. I hated that inside I was screaming for him to wake up and run, but on the outside, I was smugly silent. 

I had once read, "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man," and I feared this thing I had become was the very meaning of it. 

My apathy at its peak, its time had come. I wrapped my hand of flesh around the one of steel that held the handle steadfast. Both hands securely gripping the knife, I raised it high above my head. I held that position for a moment, belligerent anger sweeping over me, and as it stoked, my soul blanched. I realized the full weight of the horror I was about to commit. A crime against all that was good in this world, a sin against the only true love I had ever had known. My mind churned with invisible turmoil, and rapidly my thoughts began to boil over as my heart beat... for the first time since I had pushed Clark out of my home and my life that day five years earlier... 

Reluctance was manifesting, but my mutated judgment and will superceded my humanity still. My dark side resisted the force it felt building, rising from the floor of the abyss, desperate to prevent this somehow, anyhow. The villainous thing that owned me felt the audacity to carry through falter, and it would not tolerate rebellion. My hands clasped the knife, pale skin over black glove, and with every ounce of strength my body could muster, reared the knife back over my head as far as possible, preparing to strike with incredible might and speed. My breath came heavy, and my eyes widened as I noticed Clark starting to stir from the sanctity of dream. I had to do it then or risk losing the opportunity... 

I brought the dagger down with a great blow. 

Suddenly, my body went cold, burning with some hazy rush at the same time. 

"Lex?" Clark's voice. Panicked. Confused. Afraid. 

I felt a tear slip, my breath short, and I glanced down. 

The blade was stuck deep in my chest, my own hands still wrapped firmly around it. Numbness sunk into my every nerve, taking every feeling, except the one pouring into my heart, like parched earth receiving the ocean. Looking back, it was probably just me drowning in my own blood, but it felt like love. 

I had done it. Somehow I had overcome and my love triumphed against its real enemy. Me. 

I remember trying to smile, holding onto the knife, keeping it embedded in my chest, and Clark gawking at the sight, his eyes glazed and cheeks soaked in rivers of tears. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen again, as if I were seeing him for the first time. He was distraught, and he didn't understand... didn't know how close he came to meeting a tragic fate, didn't know how close I had come to the unspeakably wronging him. Nevertheless, he was alive and well, and nothing else mattered. 

Shock and hurt looked to me for an explanation that I was incapable of giving. His eyes traveled from mine to the blade, which was quite plainly glowing green, warning him to keep his distance... but he still rushed to my side as I began to fall... And that was the last thing I ever saw. Clark running to catch me. The last thing I felt was his arms embracing me as we both lay on the floor... 

Finally, I slipped from consciousness, satisfied... and it was all over. 

* * *

As much as I would like to say that it hadn't been me holding that Kryptonite knife over Clark's heart fully prepared to plunge it in, it had been, because deny it as I may, it was I who went crazy, I who lost control, I who surrendered to the insanity. But I'm also the one who stopped it from happening. I may have caused pain, but I can happily say that I am the one who ended it. I sunk the dagger into my own chest to save him, and ironically enough, I managed to save myself too. 

So... Now I wait on the other side for Clark to come and rescue me from my loneliness once again... 

There is hope after all... 

Or so I've been led to believe. 


End file.
